Concussions have been on my mind because of my little adventure a couple of days ago. Juxtaposed with that, I’ve been reading a book - Everything’s Fucked - by Mark Manson - where he espouses, among other things, adherence to a Kantian philosophy. Now, I’ve never read Kant firsthand, but my understanding is that among other things he champions the idea of doing the “right thing”, without regard to consequence or gain. Which is why it seems like a good idea to talk about my love of college football.
I loved college football. I loved football because I grew up with it. Growing up in Buffalo, everyone was a Bills fan. It was just something you did on the weekend; turn your garage over to help park cars for the stadium, dress in red, white and blue, argue about Jim Kelly or Thurman Thomas like they were your best friends. So went I went to college, I got involved with the band and the football team. I loved being in the band; I never played an instrument but helped with the theater performances (that’s a post for another day!). Even after college ended, I stayed a fan. I remember sitting in my office at Johns Hopkins looking for pirated copies of audio broadcasts of the games. One of my favorite stories is finding a broadcast stream where the announcers didn’t realize they weren’t cutting the mikes during the commercial breaks but also weren’t broadcasting the commercials so I just got to hear two guys shooting the shit about their weekend and their wives while waiting for the game to restart.
Anyway. I don’t watch anymore. Which sucks. I miss it. But knowing what we know now about CTE - Chronic Traumatic Encephelopathy - something feels deeply wrong about watching. I don’t watch much pro football either for a number of reasons, but at least there I feel like those are adults getting paid to do something self-harming and stupid. Sort of like mining; not a job I would want, but at least I don’t feel ethically queasy about it. But college kids is another thing entirely. There’s the youth factor; they have their whole lives ahead of them. There’s the education irony; college is supposed to teach you to be smarter, not destroy your brain. But there’s also the ethical dilemma that they are supposed to be amateurs. They’re not even getting paid.
I sincerely hope someday science figures this out so I can go back to watching. But in the meantime, it just isn’t fun for me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopathy
